The Whole Entire World is Colonised, Only We are Free – Haig Aivazian in conversation with Maria Rusinovskaya
Published
Conversation
Time: 17 November, 21:15 CET
Venue: Østre, Østre Skostredet 3
The conversation will be streamed live at vimeo.com/bekdotno
Fear of night is an ancient phobia, but the urban histories of that fear give some insight into how it was employed in the service of security regimes along class, gender, race, and other lines since the beginning of the 19th century. The conversation will take place following a screening of Aivazian´s short video “All of Your Stars Are but Dust on My Shoes” (2021), which splices together a vast array of material to stream across varying instances of public administration of light and darkness as an essential policing tool, across global cities, but with the artist’s native Beirut setting the central pulse.
The conversation will build on Aivazian’s ongoing research into the genealogies and futures of technologies in the hands of variously configured legal regimes, and the kinds of subjects they make and unmake. During the conversation, we will track exchanges of tools, know how and information across colonial contexts old and current, between the US and Israeli defense and security forces. We will also discuss the increasing infiltration of warfare tactics into policing, from Baghdad to the West Bank to Los Angeles and beyond. By re-examining these connections, we will look at the kinds of ontologies generated by law as a technology in and of itself. In the current landscape of immanent technological imbalance between the colonizers and the colonized in Gaza, we will attempt to address sensitive questions such as who gets to be inventive, innovative or cutting edge and who doesn’t?
Haig Aivazian
Haig Aivazian is an artist living in Beirut. Working across a range of media and modes of address, he delves into the ways in which power embeds, affects and moves people, objects, animals within landscape and architecture. Between 2020-2022, Aivazian was Artistic Director of the Beirut Art Center where he was founding editor of thederivative.org
Maria Rusinovskaya
Maria Rusinovskaya is a curator and director of BEK – Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts.
Return to the full symposium programme.
Image: Haig Aivazian.